Reese Witherspoon Enjoys Four Christmases

Poor Reese Witherspoon. No matter what she does, there's scandal. She gets married, there's scandal she makes more money than him. She gets divorced, there's scandal. She makes a Vince Vaughn movie and suddenly they're fighting.

Reese Witherspoon on Four Christmases

"First of all I don’t know where all that came from," she said. "Every costar I ever worked with I'm either having an affair, about to get married to him, we’re having a baby or we absolutely cannot stand each other. Because that’s how you feel about everybody now, right? You can’t just get along with people and work with them. There has to be some sort of drama but no, we got along great. We were very good friends and were very much partners on this movie. We decided to produce it together and we rewrote the script together. Every day was like, ‘How are we going to do this? What are we going to do now?’"

In Four Christmases, Vaughn and Witherspoon play a couple who have to visit four sets of divorced parents in one day. "They have to face that horrible fear of bringing home their significant other to really meet every humiliating memory you have of your past. Everyone avoids it, it’s a natural human instinct to avoid it so it’s sort of that comedy about having to really deal with it."

Four Christmases

Four Christmases

Four Christmases

In the beginning, both characters are anti-marriage and don't want to have kids. Of course the holiday spirit changes that. "First of all that’s a very modern idea, that we’re going to be together but not be married and never have children. It sounds like something people theorize about but is very difficult to do. People grow and evolve and change and it’s sort of interesting to see how this relationship in the movie has to grow. I think the most important thing we really worked on was finding that place of being comfortable in the uncomfortable. Not knowing where things are going to go and still feeling ok about that. We really worked hard on trying to find that in words and scenes."

One of the film's comic set pieces thrusts Witherspoon into a jump-jump with a gaggle of rowdy kids. "After I had to shoot with the jump-jump for two consecutive weeks, I am very, very scared of the jump-jump. We were on that thing for two weeks on a soundstage with all those children and of course one kid decided to eat too many Doritos one day and got on the jump-jump, and then the screaming and the evacuating because she threw up everywhere. It was disgusting. Major contamination. But then we had to get back on, the show goes on so we had to get back up there. I threw out my shoulder throwing one of those 10-year-old boys to the side. It was fun for me. I don’t really get to do that physical comedy that often."

While Four Christmases is not the typical Reese Witherspoon comedy, she's happy to explore other facets of the genre that has served her well. "I enjoy it. I have a really good time. It means a lot to me when I get to have experiences where I meet young people and they say, 'You know, this is the movie that got me through a hard time' or, 'This is the movie I watch with my family.' That’s a big deal for me. I get tired of being labeled sometimes but I’m so lucky. I got to do Walk The Line and Rendition and Vanity Fair. I feel really lucky I’ve been able to go back and forth."